Remembering Sgt. Wilson
Victory in Japan Day occurred 11 months before I was conceived. I eventually figured out that the war with Japan had started on my mother’s 25th birthday in 1941, the same year my brother was born. Because everyone talked so much about the war, I thought we had been fighting with Germany since the 1930s.
So many of my uncles ended up serving in that war that when they came home, and thankfully they all did, we were the recipients of their largess. One uncle brought us a gas mask, another an authentic German army helmet, plus we also got a canteen, utility belt, mess kit, backpack, a few live hand grenades, a machine gun, and three bayonets.
Nah, I’m just kidding about the weapons. We had to make our knives out of sticks from the maple trees that surrounded our house, and we’d buy toy cap guns from Woolworth’s or McCrory’s stores.
Well, that’s not completely true. One Christmas I did get a Red Ryder rifle, but it wasn’t a BB gun. It shot little round corks. When we ran out of corks, we’d jam the barrel into the ground and shoot dirt, and that came in handy when you were defending yourself from heavily armed cousins or neighbor kids who were using black walnuts as make-believe hand grenades that bounced off that German helmet.
I’m happy to report that no matter how incredibly heated these battles became, no one was hurt in the making of this story, and even though we all had toy guns, no one ever shot up a school, church, theater, or peaceful demonstration. It was all make-believe, and the good guys always won.
When autumn came, we were limited to cooking fake goulash from crab apples, and any leftover vegetables from the now-depleted vegetable garden in our mess kits over an open campfire. Rest assured, none of it ever touched our lips. It was just part of the fake army life.
By winter, however, we moved our games inside to the little green, plastic soldiers that we pitted against each other in vicious combat. My army guy’s name was Jim Wilson. He was a sergeant, and the only toy soldier with a handgun extended from his right hand. I so identified with him, that he became my alter ego.
Jim was brave, smart, cagey, inventive, and, when necessary, he could be extremely brutal. He sometimes became a paratrooper and jumped with a homemade tissue and string parachute from one of my model airplanes or even a navy frogman who dove into my bathwater from a plastic motorboat.
Jim and I became so close that he ended up causing me some deep childhood trauma from which I have never completely recovered. While on vacation once, my dad made a wrong turn, and we ended up on Independence Avenue in downtown Washington, D.C., during rush hour. Because we didn’t have air conditioning, we all had our windows down, and Jim was fighting with the enemy on the window ledge when things went south. He slipped out of my hand and fell into traffic.
At that point, I screamed for my dad to stop the car. He was already in complete panic mode by then as cars were whizzing past us on all sides, blowing their horns and sometimes gesturing for him to move or get out of the way. His screaming reply to me was, “@*^#@#, I can’t.” That’s when I lost it and screamed. “Dad, we can’t let Jim out there to be run over,”
I’m not exactly sure what my dad said under his breath, but I heard Mom yell, “Charlie!”
I cried deep sobs in complete anguish the whole way to Fredrick, Md. But Jim Wilson was gone forever. Maybe someday I’ll find his unmarked toy soldier grave near Arlington Cemetery. Rest in peace, Sgt. Wilson.
Nick Jacobs is a Windber resident.